Revealing and Acting : Anxiety and Courage in Heidegger and Arendt

In Martin Heidegger’s concept of care, he explains the process of becoming as an intersubjective relation that extends beyond mere spatial proximity of one being to an other. Through this common and basic experience of care, anxiety is an ontological revealing of self, perpetually leaving behind remnants of prior self-constitution(s). It is through anxiety that being is lifted out of the average everydayness of our human condition. Anxiety, then for Heidegger, is critical, as it confronts nothingness on route to an authentic existence where being finds grounding in Being. We find in the work of Hannah Arendt, therefore, a conceptual continuation of Heidegger’s conception of anxiety through her understanding of courage. For Heidegger, anxiety suggests transcendence as a possibility whereas for Arendt courage via action is transcending. By reading Heidegger’s concept of anxiety through an Arendtian lens we can therefore arrive at a political project shaped by both theory and practice.

The concept of anxiety offered by Heidegger provides a window into the more existential aspects of his work.His idea of being in and through care welcomes such a reading beyond the basic, phenomenological existential framework that he describes in Being and Time: existentiality, existential, and existentiell.Beyond this, we are able to uncover an existential stream running coconstitutively to the more commonly known existential thought deriving from schools of French philosophy.In placing Hannah Arendt along this continuum, which is derived from a Heideggerian trajectory, we highlight distinct elements of existentiality within her work.This comparison goes far beyond a base assumption that, for example, 'existence precedes essence,' but rather is found within the prominent role of (inter)action that she proposes.The being of each individual is a unique process, which is experienced differently as persons navigate the particular situation(s) of their lives.The conditionality of freedom is always contingent upon an individual's relation to the Other.Rather than this aiding in a form of transcendence, which allows us to realize that we are condemned to act upon our freedom, as is found in Sartre, an illusion of freedom is brought forth by the social realm that requires courageous action to grasp.A speech act moves past a look which is received and taken in from the Other and solidifies the need for concrete action between individuals.If we are to grasp at any semblance of freedom, speech enables us to avoid the passivity of action.It lends itself, as a method of engagement, to courageous actions directed towards freedom.Before we turn to Arendt, we have to bring Heidegger's notion of anxiety to mind.The concept of anxiety in Heidegger's work will first be examined in such a way to illuminate the existentiality of being.Following a detailed analysis of his theorization of anxiety, an explication of Arendt's concept of courage will be taken up in order to highlight the existential aspects of her work as part of a Heideggerian trajectory.

Being-Anxiety
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger provides a phenomenological framework from which an individual is able to come to an understanding of self through a process of perpetual object and Other identifications.Such understanding is relational and thus requires a relational and reflective consciousness in order to shed pre-supposition and to becomerevealing oneself through action and creating self-constitution based on a remainder of the past which haunts us, rather than an innate essence which dictates.The stage in this process wherein the self is revealed is that of anxiety and the recognition of this as part of our ontological make-up.In moments of anxiety and subsequent reflection, previous (inter)action and confrontations with the Other dissipate providing brief moments of clarity and allowing individuals to construct meaning surrounding initial perceptions.Further, anxiety arises in and through the moments wherein we must confront our own freedom.It is a fundamental mood that provides an abrupt revealing of ourselves with a stark clarity that facilitates the disclosing of human existence as being in the world.
Individual anxiety is expressed at the horizon of our possibilities and is an impetus to action.In contrast, fear is a state which materializes out of dread in relation to an imminent and present danger, once this danger is removed so too is our fear.Heidegger asserts that fear is a static state of being that renders us (more) powerless in its fleeting, combustive nature and irascibility.Anxiety responds to threats that are absent and present themselves as one of many possibilities for us; it is an ephemeral mood that corresponds to a multitude of differing situations and moves us towards action.Conceptualized as an existential, phenomenological ontology, particular moments of anxiety can only be known by the individual, and thus arises out of the particularities of the self.For Heidegger, in anxious moments we attempt to confront our possibilities and make decisions deriving from a positional, reflective consciousness regarding the potentiality of a situation and of ourselves.
Being is a challenge for us as human beings.It requires the development and active use of a positional, reflective consciousness to mediate between our own experience of being in the world and that of the Other.Nothing can be considered as given for us and thus we must shed the presuppositions and determinate attitudes that dilute the authenticity of Being.The empirical sciences, then, cannot be considered as giving the sole fundamental contribution to one's consciousness, its workings, and the Being of existence.This is especially significant in the discussion of our term, Being-anxiety.Anxiety as a mental health issue is not equivalent to the anxiety that we are in our average everyday-ness and must be conceptualized and approached in a much different manner.The scientific, biological or physiological is not the only manifestation of Being which one's existence can have, nor is it the that which lies at the forefront.Instead, anxiety exists in and through human action, reflection, and consequence."This fact, in its facticity, is a problem ontologically, not merely with regard to its ontical causation and course of development.Only because Dasein is anxious in the very depths of its Being, does it become possible for anxiety to be elicited physiologically."ii The term Being-anxiety is meant to describe the ontological state of Being, which intercedes our possibilities with our realities by way of reflection and action.It captures the core challenge that our being free poses for us in revealing ourselves as anxiety or anxious being when confronting the prospects ahead and the fact that we must constantly make decisions in order to persist in existence.Such persistence differs greatly from that prompted by our fear.While Being-anxiety positions toward an open (yet troubling) horizon, fear is an enclosure.
Fear is a static state of Being as the choices it concedes are total and determinate.In fear, we tend to turn back, away from the future or we attempt to destroy and dominate the object of our fright.Heidegger conceptualizes fear as a 'mode of state-of-mind' brought on by that which has a threatening character.iii He asserts that fear can be considered from three differing points of view: "(1) that in the face of which we fear, (2) fearing, and (3) that about which we fear."iv That in the face of which we fear is what can be understood as 'fearsome' and as a potential detriment to us.This is the stage at which fear poses the most malleable and open disclosing of the self in relation to the potential object of fear.In this case, what one fears can be drawn closer and increase intensity in one's state of mind or it may lessen.This point of view is also most similar to how we understand Being-anxiety.However, Heidegger asserts, " [t]his implies that what is detrimental as coming-close by carries with it the patent possibility that it may stay away from us or pass us by; but instead of lessening or extinguishing our fearing, this enhances it."v While the relation to what is fearsome may seem to provide several open possibilities to us, it cannot.
First, we contend that the fear-response is one of either passivitya waiting in fearor of domination and control.The act of domination seemingly extinguishes that which we fear, but in reality does not as it precludes our freedom.Freedom is inhibited when found in the exercise of domination; this is best exemplified in relation to the Other as my freedom is realized in the reflection of freedom found in the Other.Second, the malleability of that in the face of which we fear is not solely a site of our own potentiality but of vulnerability.That which is perceived to have a threatening character can, as Heidegger states, pass by or come close.It can also be directed toward us or away from us as an act of manipulation by an external force.In this case, we are left in an inauthentic mode of existence wherein we act without making conscious and reflective choices and instead act in a compulsive and non-positional manner dictated to us by social convention or a dominant ideology.This inauthentic state of being which is derived from manipulation is directly related to Heidegger's discussion of 'The they [das Man]' which can be understood as actions done simply because 'that is what one does' or because one fails to see past how a dominant ideological group attempts to determine what and how one sees their social reality."In this inconspicuous and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 'they' is unfolded.We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they [man] take pleasure; we read, see and judge about literature and art as they see and judge […]."vi Fearing as such is associated with a more acute association with the object of fear.It is made clear and in its close spatial proximity to us we are able to allow it to matter to us.Yet, fearing is a state of mind and even in our reflection on it, we remain in fear until that which we fear is neutralized.vii The state-of-mind characterized by fear seeks reconciliation and as a result closes off a present situation without providing the necessary mediation for immediate detotalizationa continuation of one's project of existence.That about which we fear is our existence itself: it is our Being-fear.In Being-fear, ourselves as endangered are disclosed to us."Fear closes off our endangered Being-in, and yet at the same time lets us see it, so that when the fear has subsided Dasein must first find its way about again."viii To be in fear is not to be condemned to perpetual inauthenticity, but is a more trying state of bad faith characterized by its difficultly in overcoming.Therefore, unlike anxiety, fear discloses our existence only through the taking away, loss, or lack of something.The mediating function of anxiety may provide a path onto which Dasein, or existence may 'find its way about again.' Fear and anxiety exist in a dialectical relation wherein our anxiousness allows us to fear and to also overcome; when afraid our Being-anxiety unearths the plethora of human possibilities, which one may take on."Fear is anxiety, fallen into the 'world,' inauthentic and, as such hidden from itself."ix Without recognition of our own falling, as falling in and of itself is a choice without choosing, we live inauthentic in our refusal to see our choices as our own and in turning away from consequence.
Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its own most-potentiality-for-Being that is its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.Anxiety brings Dasein face to face with its Being-free for the authenticity of its Being, and for this authenticity as a possibility, which it always is. x The authenticity associated with one's Being-anxiety is derived from a certain-uncertainty.That which brings about a mood of anxiety is perpetual, multifarious, and completely indefinite; it exists simultaneously as everything and nothing at all."[T]he world as such is that in the face of which one has anxiety."xi Here is the key to anxiety's detotalizing function.The imposing threat is derived in and through one's own being-in-the-world and is found present to us everywhere and nowhere.The imposition is a motivation; it is the direction of one's attention upon the horizon of possibility, a possibility that is undefined until acted upon.In action, anxiety subsides only to manifest in us once again.At this conjuncture it may devolve into a fear, which is focused on the past and lacks the authentic freedom of an existence seeded in the present and aimed toward future prospect(s).On the other hand, anxiety most often evaporates into nothingness and "we are accustomed to say that 'it was really nothing'."xii Yet, to negate experience in such a way is to recognize action and our affective relation to it as something.Each experience of something is not a totalization of Beingm but of a moment in an entire project becoming.Even when anxiety is overcome in favor of free action it is not wholly nothing or somethingit is one thing, in a series of moments wherein each moment detotalizes the prior via the process of negation in consciousness.
Negation finds meaning in the lesser or undefined concepts and phenomena that we encounter, leaving open the complexity of our reality.Via the principle of negation we open up the possibility for existentiality, which, instead of being conciliatory and whole, works against the conformity of determinism.Even one's existentiell xiii understanding, the purely phenomenal and personal experience of existence has necessity for a dual process of negation of Being within the self by way of the relation with the other.Moving from Heidegger we can see a conceptual extension of his conception of anxiety, through Arendt's understanding of courage.The notion of freedom is unearthed in the social sphere and requires a step toward courageous action in order to be realized.It is the act of speech that moves one past a mere look which is received and taken in from the Other and calls for concrete action between individuals.It has been shown that anxiety is a crucial aspect of one's being, due to its revelatory and transitory role in making our possibilities clear to us.Arendt's concept of courage provides a catalyst for action that makes possibility manifest as reality.

Being-Courageous in Dark Times
In her major work, The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt takes up the Heideggerian understanding of anxiety and directly constitutes it through the actualization of action qua courage.Arendt distinguishes between three modes of human engagementlabor, work, and actionto articulate the foundational underpinnings of courage that trigger the enactment of action within the public sphere.Within this model of human activities, work cannot escape the cycle of necessity, and labor is merely reduced to a principle of utility.For Arendt, then, the highest activity of human life is undoubtedly action.In her phenomenology of action, Arendt extrapolates from mass society certain aspects of human life typically ignored in political thought and brings them front and center.xiv The foundation of this category elevates human freedom by stressing the human capacity and potentiality for creation through action and speech.It is for this reason that both animal laborans and homo faber are unable to constitute themselves as political beings.For Arendt, humans have the potentiality to start anew, to express their unique identities, and take us to places beyond our current imagination.Action, therefore, is a classification of activities that are not bounded to the commands of nature, nor are they a further extension of homo faber's fabrication of objects for the human edifice.Rather, action by a political being means direct activity amongst others in public to reflect, disclose, and link the specific being.
Arendt contends that two principles are essential for action: natality and plurality.In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt lays the groundwork for her notion of natality, writing, "[b]eginning before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man's freedom.Initium utesset homo creates est, 'that a beginning be made man was created' said Augustine.This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man."xv This assertion is crucial to our contention of Arendt's extension of anxiety via courage not only because it reaffirms the decisiveness of action and the possibility of freedom but because of its textual location.Her assertion herepregnant with both the anxiety of what is to come and the realization that this event will come imminent with potentialis firmly situated as the very last line in her impressive analysis on the rise and destruction of totalitarianism.It should not be surprising then, that Arendtthe thinker of action par excellenceconcludes her work on a note of hope hinting at the promise of courageous deeds.
For Arendt, this concept of natality is the condition of being born, described as a new beginning; and since birth, like action, is the creation of something that previously did not exist it escapes the parameters of causality as it is spontaneous and uncertain.xvi However, we argue that natality also possesses an alternative dimension in Arendt's thought, one beyond just the emergence of a new beginning.Influenced by early Christian thought, predominantly the teachings of Jesus Christ towards love and forgiveness xvii and Saint Augustine's caritas, xviii Arendt situates natality within the framework of amor mundi, xix constituting action as a phenomenological endeavor that reveals the immanent uniqueness of a being.It is through this public revealing that we come to illuminate the being-courageous inherent within being as a project with-others-and-for-others.
For Arendt, amor mundi is the direction of human potentiality for new beginnings towards the world and for the "sake of the world rather than toward oneself in isolation from the world and for the sake of oneself independent of others."xx The antecedents of Arendt's thought towards amor mundi can be traced to a personal correspondence to Karl Jaspers in August 1955.Expressing her movement towards love as a guiding principle of her thought, Arendt writes, "[I've] begun to truly love the world so late, actually only in recent years."xxi During a lecture at the University of Chicago in 1963, Arendt further articulated her conception of amor mundi contending that what is at stake is the "world and our love for it."xxii In elegant prose, Arendt espoused to her students, "Amor mundi: love or better dedicated to the world into which we were born, and this is possible because we shall not live forever.To be dedicated to the world means among other things: not to act as though we were immortal."xxiii Like Augustine's conception of caritas and Nietzsche's amor fati, Arendt contends that political action is about "taking sides for the world's sake" not in an act of duty or self-sacrifice, but out of gratitude and love for our world at hand.xxiv In turn, natality through the framework of amor mundi is a worldly phenomenon, which is entirely oriented to the world, for the durability and fate of our common world.
The second crucial principle of action is plurality.It is here in conjunction with her notion of natality through the prism of amor mundi that Arendt's political framework rendered possible through being-courageous begins to crystalize.By plurality, Arendt means that all humans are equal as they are all derived from the same species.Equal on a species level; however, unique as individual beings.No two humans are the same for Arendt, not only in their physical, spiritual, and intellectual capacities, but also in the way in which they view the common world.Plurality is thus the primary existential condition of life as action is "the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world."xxv   It is here that we can begin to see the influence of Heideggerian thought in Arendt's work.Arendt's conception of plurality finds its antecedents in Martin Heidegger's notion of Mitsein.For Heidegger, 'being-with' is the inauthentic and pervasive undertakings of das Man xxvi that habitually conditions us to act and see ourselves through our social surroundings.xxvii Breaking free from this disingenuous act requires a separation, albeit not a permanent or total separation, from others into solitary thought.In turn, it is the philosopher's flight from the rabble into contemplative thought.However, it is important to highlight Arendt's break with her former teacher on this point.Arendt strongly dismissed this position and objected to the hostility of the philosopher towards the polis as Heidegger contends that the public realm is characterized by conformity, mediocrity, and "functions to hide true reality and prevent the appearance of truth."xxviii For Arendt, plurality is a central element in the public realm as "action is the political activity par excellence."xxix However, plurality and freedom presupposes a boundary, a particular space for action.According to Arendt, it is in the public realm, drawing from the Greek polis and the Roman res publica, where action merges with freedom reflecting the highest expression of the human condition.The public realm is thus a creationa human construct par excellenceof a demarcated space in daily life available and constructed to capture the worldly phenomenon of political action.It is important to highlight that Arendt's conception of space extends beyond the physical dimension.Inspired greatly by the famous ancient Athenian proclamation, "wherever you go, you will be a polis," Arendt writes, "[t]he polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose […]." xxx For Arendt, the public realm, or the political space necessary for the realization of freedom, appears "no matter where they happen to be." xxxi   The temporality of the site, whether it is a public square, a town hall meeting, or a factory council meeting, appears as the open sky for men of action to demonstrate their freedom to others in the material world.As a locus of subjectivity and collectivity, the site exists as the physical, or perhaps digital, dimension for the raising up of the Arendtian Lazarus.The actions of the Arendtian actor during a distinct moment, located upon a specific site of action, does not capture the ontological nature of either the being or the collective, rather it only reflects the singular and collective voice of the newly resurrected body in that moment.The location of political action, or the site of ontological reflection, becomes not only a necessary condition for the flourishing of the vita activa, but a fleeting, ephemeral nexus of time, space, and agency.
Thus within this constructed public space, men of honor and glory, with Achilles as the archetype, are isolated from the inequalities and material necessities of the outside world; it is here that men of action compete challenging ideas with the most persuasive argument rising to the top.Moreover, the public realm is constructed as a net to contain, but also to promote, great men striving to be great by signaling out their excellence to others.Arendt describes the ancient Greek polis as this setting for the reflection of freedom and merit, "[t]he public realm, in other worlds, was reserved for individuality; it was the only place where men could show who they really and inexchangebaly [sic] were."xxxii   The notion of Being-anxiety within Heideggerian thought thus finds a continuation and further articulation in Arendt's phenomenological categorization of action.The authenticity of Beinganxiety qua uncertainty is reflected by the Arendtian actor's acceptance and embrace of natality and plurality.To act in the present, in face of adversities, with the realization of one's own limited existence is to break with an inauthentic existence of conformity by stepping forward into the light of an existence-with-others decisively through the enactment of courage, ultimately setting off into motion an isonomic public and political space containing an announcement of being-with-others under the banner of autonomy.With the temporary suspension of the time-space axis of domination, the creative and instituting powers of an individual qua action are materialized upon a theatre of public affairs announcing the metamorphosis of a socio-historical non-being into a socio-historical being, both as a political subject and as a being-with-and-in-communion-withothers.For Arendt, to break with the prevailing, hegemonic logic of domination by the actions of individuals striving to reflect their intrinsic uniqueness through a network of being-with-others is, in turn, to act courageously.
Unlike modern connotations of courage that conflate it with visions of heroism, Arendt reverses the linearity of courageous deeds via heroism back into the very phenomenology of action.It is from that source of anxiety keenly identified in Heideggerian thought that brings forth the willingness of a being to act in public; to leave "one's private hiding place and showing who one is, in disclosing and exposing one's self."xxxiii Not just action, but rather, courageous action, then, as the Ancient Greeks believed, xxxiv is the political virtue par excellence; transcending the material and biological limitations of a life with-others through an insertion of one "into the world and [to] begin a story of one's own." xxxv Being-courageous is thus to enter into the horizon of indeterminacy through a love and affirmation of the world at hand essentially constructing a public space that is sustained and reimagined through an outlook that is oriented to the future, while at the same time fully cognizant of the limitedness of existence.To be-courageous, therefore, is to reconfigure messianic conceptualizations of political heroism; it is to invert it away from the shortcomings of its application throughout the western canon in the form of the Philosopher King or the Rousseauian Legislator or the Übermensch, and to reconstitute it along a phenomenological plane through a matrix of facticity of being-with-others set against the dark times that accompanies a world that is always shared with others.
For Arendt, then, politics is a three-dimensional theater endowed with the potentiality of individuals to gain freedom through speech and action, but always through the recognition and display of love, gratitude, and courage.Throughout her works, the atrocities of the Holocaust, the destruction of the political realm through the rise of totalitarianism, and the threat of nuclear annihilation constantly cast a shadow on her political vision.Her willingness to not only engage with the salient issues of her times, but to also construct her work as a path to move forward through forgiveness and love for this world is unparalleled in the history of political theory.Arendt's premises and conclusions challenge us to see the world in a different lightto engage the world at hand for the sake of human existence.
For the First Generation of Frankfurt School theorists following Auschwitz, the possibility of politically changing society for the better was untenable, if not decisively, impossible.But for Arendt, her final assertion in The Origins of Totalitarianisma claim that is prominently revisited in The Human Conditionis once again telling.It not only reaffirms her hope in humanity, but it also carefully asserts the distinctiveness of individuals made visible through courageous action.In our acting and speaking, we reveal our "unique personal identities and thus make [our] appearance in the human world" and create a world for others.xxxvi "With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world," Arendt writes, "and this insertion is like a second birth."xxxvii A second birth for this world; a world that we all inhabit for better or for worse; a world that is constantly under the threat of destruction that can only be spared doom through the actions of men; a world of both inherent despair and triumph.xxxviii For Arendt, this world, our world, is at hand for us all to courageously act.
The impetus for this type of action has been thoroughly explored in this paper, and we have attempted to illuminate that Arendt's conception of action is predicated upon a dimension of existentiality premised along being-courageous, which finds its philosophical origins in Heideggerian thought.By linking Heidegger's understanding of anxiety with Arendt's vision of the vita activa, particularly the category of action, we have sought to highlight a crucial and often neglected dimension of existentialism throughout her work; endorsed the influence of Heideggerian thought on Arendt's worldview, an issue that has consistently remained intellectually contested; and, invited a reformulation of Arendt's phenomenology of action to more fully account for the necessity of courage, a revelatory public actioncontrary from the western canon's vision of political heroismenacted through both word and deed in genuine pursuit of freedom.In this paper, we assume while there is a personal experience of affective existence, it cannot be defined as a "Being" separated from ones being seen by the other.xvi Arendt, The Human Condition, 233.Arendt writes, "The reason why we are never able to foretell with certainty the outcome and end of any action is simply that action has no end.The process of a single deed can quite literally endure throughout time until mankind itself has come to an end."xvii Arendt, The Human Condition, 238.Arendt contends, "The discover of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth.The fact that he made this discovery in a religious context and articulated it in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously in a strictly secular sense."xviii In Tractates on the First Letter of John, VII, 7-8, Augustine writes, "One last time, then, you are taught a short precept: Love, and do what you will: if you are silent, be silent in love; if you shout, shout in love; if you correct, correct in love; if you spare, spare in love: let the root of love be within, and nothing but good can spring from this root."In his magnum opus City of God, Augustine contends that caritas is essential for the sake of humanity, not just followers of Christ, posing the question, "Is not the unfeigned confidence and mutual love of true and good friends our one solace in human society?"  1996), 117.Heidegger writes, "As being with, Da-sein 'is' essentially for the sake of others.This must be understood as an existential statement as to its essence."Further, Heidegger contends on page 121, "The they is an existential and belongs as a primordial phenomenon to the positive constitution of Da-sein."xxviii Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954(New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1994)

i
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 179.ii Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans.John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper Perennial, 1962out of Heidegger's Being and Time and supposes a distinct personal existential experience of Being. xiv Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (London: JM Dent & Sons, LTD, 1974), 58.xv Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1973), 479.